Is your Restaurant Social Enough?

Success does leave clues and engaging customer via social media is a necessity for brand awareness, product trial, and sales according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. 

Do you invest enough in in social media to drive sales?  Remember when industry ‘buzz’ would drive sales for a branded product or how a newspaper review would drive sales for a new restaurant?  Well, today you need that and even more in the way of social media according to Johnson.,

In a new survey by MGH determined that nearly half (45 percent) of U.S. diners said they’ve tried a restaurant for the first time because of a social media post made by the establishment itself, while 21 percent claimed posts could be a deterrent. Further, 22 percent said a restaurant’s social post enticed them to return.

Note: Of respondents who actively follow and engage with restaurants on social media, 74% say they are more likely to visit or order food from those establishments.  Here are some other notable stats:

·         42 percent of U.S. diners say they have interacted with restaurants on at least one social media platform. Of that group, 66 percent said they are more likely to visit or order food from the restaurant.

·         13 percent of U.S. diners say a restaurant’s social media post has discouraged them from returning to a restaurant.

·         36 percent of U.S. diners follow restaurants on social media, and 39% of that group mainly do so to help determine if they want to dine in or order food from the restaurant.

·         89 percent of U.S. diners have a social media account.

·         62 percent of U.S. diners say they log on to their social media accounts several times per day.

Don’t over look the importance of messaging to your customers via social media even if you only have one unit, five units, twenty units, or 44 units. Success does leave clues and evolving is one of them.

Looking for success clues of your own? Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing and business development ideations. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities, technology, or a new menu product segment.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or twitter.com/grocerant

Battle for Share of Stomach

Is your Food “Instragram-able”

With over 25,981 daily views of this blog per day during the month of November, 2017 the team at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® understands the value of digital, visceral, enabled foodservice.  While our Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson has been called a ‘influencer, thought leader, and of course Grocerant expert he reminds us not to forget the power of Instragram.

According to Bon Appetit, influencers can, and often do, “make” restaurants. A wave of Instagram posts about the milkshakes at Black Tap Burgers in New York’s Soho led to a Buzzfeed story with more than 2 million views, hours-long lines, and a feature on ABC’s “The Chew.”

Farmers, packers, grower/shippers can take some lessons from the trend and apply them to their own marketing and visual story telling. The next time you are developing materials that include photos, think about it through the Instagram lens and ask yourself: is this picture Instagram-worthy? 

You are reading our blog and time and time again I get asked for copies of the food photo’s on our blog. Instagram is changing foodservice from fine dining to food trucks. Drool-worthy photos are offering a new way to form connections, evoke emotions and share experiences.

We read how Ben Walton of Ben’s Canteen in the UK is just one restauranteur embracing Instagram. “It’s a good way to check whether we’re resonating with our crowd. If people are posting lots of pictures, we know we’re doing something right,” Walton told The Independent.

While some may scratch their heads in astonishment at the “Instagram effect,” a look at the trends behind the trend reveals it makes a lot of sense. First, food and drink have always been a way to form connections. How is your brand becoming more participatory and interactive with consumers?

From holiday family dinners to first dates, sharing a meal is a bonding experience as old as time. Layer onto this a generation of digital natives who form connections not through face-to-face interactions, but digitally  Millennials and Gen Z are less trustful of traditional institutions (businesses, government, and even NGOs) than previous ones. Remember a picture is worth 1000 words.

Today’s Millennials and Gen Z  trust peers and people who they see as “like themselves” and are therefore viewed as more authentic and credible. Add all of this together and you can feel the Instagram momentum build. 

So who is doing the Instagramming? It’s your kids, that babysitter you hired and just about anybody under the age of 35. Next time you’re out to dinner, watch a table of millennials: before they taste or even smell their food, they’re snapping pictures. 

Millennials curate their identity through social media, and Instagram is one of those avenues. In recent years we have seen the rise of a new persona in the culinary world: the social media influencer. What new avenues of distribution are you selling your food?  Where are your customers?

Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may the clue you need to propel your continued success.